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This week marks almost a year to the day that Joanne Stokman was released from hospital following hip replacement surgery — with no home care whatsoever.

The 85-year-old Ajax widow says her doctor had reassured her beforehand “not to worry” — that she’d be taken care of when she was discharged from Rouge Valley Ajax hospital.

After all, she says, over the years when her husband Gerry (who passed away three years ago) was in and out of hospital, the help was “fantastic” and rehab was always available.

So when hospital officials decided to discharge her — after a mere two-day hospital stay — she just assumed help would follow.

Not so.

“I had no idea ... I was not informed,” she said.

When she got home from hospital, Stokman realized how limited she really was.

She could barely inch her way to the bathroom manoeuvring her deceased husband’s walker. Showers were absolutely out of the question.

Getting in and out of bed was “dangerous” because she didn’t have any support in that left hip.

“I could hardly bear to stand up to make myself a sandwich,” she said. “During the day, I was pretty well in bed by myself.”

For two weeks, her daughters took time off work and neighbours came in to help out — until one of her daughters said enough was enough and got her home care.

She said no one at the pre-op consultation told her what to expect and no one from the Central East Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) visited her while in hospital to set up a plan for her discharge.

She had no private insurance to rely on, either.

“I have a mind of my own and I thought, ‘Damn it all, I’ve got to do it whether I was in pain or not,’” Stokman said.

She finally got one hour of care twice a week — to help with showering and to provide physio — for a total of eight weeks.

Nevertheless, he insisted in an e-mail that the standard protocol with their on-site CCAC case manager is to have a discussion with the patient about supports that should be in the home when they are discharged.

Gail Scala, communications director for the Central East CCAC. said she couldn’t speak “directly” to any patient in their care, either.

But Scala said in a telephone interview they work “collaboratively” with all nine hospitals in their huge region to ensure their patients are released from hospital with the supports they need.

Asked whether people do fall through the cracks sometimes, she conceded “no system is foolproof.”

Here I thought home care was supposed to be the answer to reducing a patient’s reliance on costly hospital beds and keeping seniors in their homes for as long as possible.

Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, says sadly they hear stories like Stokman’s every day — of people being pushed out of the hospital “with no supports at all.”

Mehra said the problem is funding for home care has decreased at the same time that the number of clients are increasing and hospitals are pushing out patients faster and more frequently than ever before.

Once patients get back into the community, home care is “rationed,” she says.

“People are discharged and what they’re expected to do is ridiculous, onerous and impossible,” Mehra said.

To add insult to injury, not much has improved despite three audits by the Ontario auditor general of home care delivery — the latest in 2010.

Mehra says the buck really stops with Health Minister Deb Matthews, who has made a big deal about the increases to the home care budget in the past two years but neglects to mention that the money doesn’t begin to flow until well into the fiscal year.

She said the ministry also purposely does not delineate who has the right to access home care so they won’t be held to providing a certain level of service to people in need.

Matthews was not available to comment directly on Friday. But her spokesman, Sheamus Murphy, told me in an e-mail that their 2013 budget gave home and community care a 6% — or $260-million — increase, $110-million of which is to be used to meet the growth in home-care demand.

Asked how they ensure a more seamless transition from hospital to home, Murphy wrote that the ministry has launched 37 Health Links over the past year — a new model of care where all health care providers “work together” to provide coordinated care to patients, particularly seniors.

Stokman says she’s learned a very valuable lesson.

She’s scheduled to have surgery on her other hip.

But this time she’ll go into a retirement home for a few weeks after and let them take care of her.

She realizes the days of her hubby getting all the care he needed have “vanished.

“I don’t count on home care anymore,” she said. “The government doesn’t give a damn.”

CARE TO BE AT HOME?

• 2013 Home and Community Care budget: $2.34 billion
• Increase this year: 6% or $260 million
• Funding provided to 14 CCACs through Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs)
• Portion of funding going to administrative/case management, costs: 30%
• Funding increase to CCACs for actual home care this year: $185 million; $110-million to meet home care growth.
• Provincial auditor general audited home care in 1998, 2004 and 2010
• Key findings of 2010 audit:
— Access to care not equal across the province
— Wait lists the rule rather than exception
— 10,000 people waiting on average 8 to 262 days for service
— Each CCAC decides how much service to give clients and for how long
—Rationing of services prevalent
—Assessments of clients not done on a timely basis
— Little to no follow-up with clients
• Number of days patients supposed to be kept in hospital after hip replacement surgery: 4.4
• Number of days Joanne Stokman kept in Rouge Valley Ajax Hospital: 3
• Number of days she survived without home care: 14
• Amount of home care she got: One hour twice a week.